pre-trip linkspam
Jan. 31st, 2014 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishAwesome:
The Voynich Manuscript is a book dating from the middle of the last millenium, in no known language, with pictures of plants and animals that no one recognizes. Consensus has been that it's either an elaborate hoax, an elaborate forgery, or evidence of aliens or parallel dimension travellers or other weirdness. Now a couple of botanists may have started the process of cracking it. (Their theory is 'Mesoamerican from the time of the Spanish Conquest,' which seems reasonable to me.)
The Wine-Dark Sea: Color and Perception in the Ancient World: "Homer's descriptions of color in The Iliad and The Odyssey, taken literally, paint an almost psychedelic landscape: in addition to the sea, sheep were also the color of wine; honey was green, as were the fear-filled faces of men; and the sky is often described as bronze."
A Speck in the Sea, in which a man is rescued after spending twelve hours overboard in the North Atlantic. Excellent reading.
The Truth About Evolution: "I want you to take a moment and absorb the fact that your great^55,000,000 grandfather was a rodent. More specifically, he was a Eutherian-- the first placental mammal, and the father to all mammals besides marsupials and egg-layers. So if there's a whale out there with a similar blog who plans on writing an article like this one, tracing his father's father and so on, he's on his own up to this point, but from here forward he can just plagiarize this article and it’ll apply perfectly for whales too."
A Toast Story: How did toast become the latest artisanal food craze? (not about the feminist online magazine): "Baker assured me that he was not the Chuck Berry of fancy toast. He was its Elvis: he had merely caught the trend on its upswing." In which a coffeeshop serves coffee, coconuts, grapefruit juice, and, yes, toast.
Amusing:
The Greatest Investment Opportunity Since Dogecoin: "BUT THE INTERNET IS LIKE 10,000 DOLLARS WHEN ALL YOU NEED IS A BITCOIN."
Lol My Thesis: "Summing up years of work in one sentence." Often hilarious user-submitted summaries of their theses.
WARNING: DO NOT HIRE THESE ANIMALS
Breaking Madden: In which the machine bleeds to death: "That GIF goes from good to great once you watch the player in the background. He kind of ambles right into his own tackle, but not before rubbernecking at the misfortune of his friends."
Serious:
The Values of Money, amusing pull-quote: "Like everything the internet does, internet money is over-technical, over-engineered, probably not very well thought out, hilarious, profoundly male dominated, and eventually compared to Hitler."
Serious pull-quote:
The Techtopus: "The secret wage-theft agreements between Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar (now owned by Disney) are described in court papers obtained by PandoDaily as 'an overarching conspiracy' in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, and at times it reads like something lifted straight out of the robber baron era that produced those laws." I've seen little coverage of this elsewhere; hoping for more when the trial gets going in late May.
Why we should give free money to everyone: "Our welfare state is out of date, based on a time in which men were the sole breadwinners and employees stayed with one company for their entire careers. Our pension system and unemployment protection programs are still centered around those lucky enough to have steady employment. Social security is based on the wrong premise that the economy creates enough jobs. Welfare programs have become pitfalls instead of trampolines." Analysis of a couple of programs that purported to alleviate poverty through the simple expedient of giving people money, and their remarkable success.
The Voynich Manuscript is a book dating from the middle of the last millenium, in no known language, with pictures of plants and animals that no one recognizes. Consensus has been that it's either an elaborate hoax, an elaborate forgery, or evidence of aliens or parallel dimension travellers or other weirdness. Now a couple of botanists may have started the process of cracking it. (Their theory is 'Mesoamerican from the time of the Spanish Conquest,' which seems reasonable to me.)
The Wine-Dark Sea: Color and Perception in the Ancient World: "Homer's descriptions of color in The Iliad and The Odyssey, taken literally, paint an almost psychedelic landscape: in addition to the sea, sheep were also the color of wine; honey was green, as were the fear-filled faces of men; and the sky is often described as bronze."
A Speck in the Sea, in which a man is rescued after spending twelve hours overboard in the North Atlantic. Excellent reading.
The Truth About Evolution: "I want you to take a moment and absorb the fact that your great^55,000,000 grandfather was a rodent. More specifically, he was a Eutherian-- the first placental mammal, and the father to all mammals besides marsupials and egg-layers. So if there's a whale out there with a similar blog who plans on writing an article like this one, tracing his father's father and so on, he's on his own up to this point, but from here forward he can just plagiarize this article and it’ll apply perfectly for whales too."
A Toast Story: How did toast become the latest artisanal food craze? (not about the feminist online magazine): "Baker assured me that he was not the Chuck Berry of fancy toast. He was its Elvis: he had merely caught the trend on its upswing." In which a coffeeshop serves coffee, coconuts, grapefruit juice, and, yes, toast.
Amusing:
The Greatest Investment Opportunity Since Dogecoin: "BUT THE INTERNET IS LIKE 10,000 DOLLARS WHEN ALL YOU NEED IS A BITCOIN."
Lol My Thesis: "Summing up years of work in one sentence." Often hilarious user-submitted summaries of their theses.
WARNING: DO NOT HIRE THESE ANIMALS
Breaking Madden: In which the machine bleeds to death: "That GIF goes from good to great once you watch the player in the background. He kind of ambles right into his own tackle, but not before rubbernecking at the misfortune of his friends."
Serious:
The Values of Money, amusing pull-quote: "Like everything the internet does, internet money is over-technical, over-engineered, probably not very well thought out, hilarious, profoundly male dominated, and eventually compared to Hitler."
Serious pull-quote:
In America, even relying on community is a source of shame. The long admired idea of the "self-made man" isn't self-made because he's built the strong and loyal social connections that will support him, defend him, and turn to him for wisdom and affection throughout his long and social life. The self-made man is defined as someone who has hoarded enough money that he can pay for those things even if he is universally reviled, because destitution and need drive others, even if they despise him, into servitude to him until he dies, presumably alone.Quinn Norton is on a hopefully brief medical hiatus; I'm rather looking forward to reading more in this series when she returns.
A word to America: you may want to rethink this conception of esteem, because that is all kinds of fucked up.
The Techtopus: "The secret wage-theft agreements between Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar (now owned by Disney) are described in court papers obtained by PandoDaily as 'an overarching conspiracy' in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, and at times it reads like something lifted straight out of the robber baron era that produced those laws." I've seen little coverage of this elsewhere; hoping for more when the trial gets going in late May.
Why we should give free money to everyone: "Our welfare state is out of date, based on a time in which men were the sole breadwinners and employees stayed with one company for their entire careers. Our pension system and unemployment protection programs are still centered around those lucky enough to have steady employment. Social security is based on the wrong premise that the economy creates enough jobs. Welfare programs have become pitfalls instead of trampolines." Analysis of a couple of programs that purported to alleviate poverty through the simple expedient of giving people money, and their remarkable success.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-01 02:10 pm (UTC)You've got to understand: I'm not a person who laughs. I enjoy humor, I smile, but I rarely actually make a laughter sound, and certainly never in private -- laughter is one of those things that you just do as a social communication thing.
I fell off my chair. Because I couldn't breathe and got lightheaded. I was SCREAMING with laughter. I got nauseated from how much my torso contracted, and my stomach muscles still hurt.
I really don't know why. Objectively, it's funny, but not THAT funny. But, somehow... it's eleven QWOPs being run over by eleven Andre the Giants if Andre was given superpowers. The bit where one of the losing team players has tackled the winning team player, and is hanging onto the guy's leg, and the guy hasn't even slowed down, and the player is just being dragged down the field ... the quarterback of the losing team being knocked over by the ball being snapped to him ...
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